As the sun comes up,
I realize I’ve been wasting away night after night
And I’ve done it all with a nonchalant air about me and a smirk plastered onto my **** face.
I’ve been wasting the gift that is my life.
I’ve had every opportune moment to put an end to my dilly-dalliances
And yet I have ignored each of these many signs in favor of bringing about my own downfall. Might as well bring out the corks because I’ve practically celebrated–whooped and cheered!–as I’ve run the course of life through each tattered obstacle
Bumping and falling like a drunk performance artist trying to make a buck at the county fair.

It only reveals itself after it's gone–
In the colors of rotting fruit, in the portrait of the dying.
In a photograph or a broken bauble.
It typically shows itself in the weary faces of the several-times-married.
It was in conversation with him that I suddenly realized–
He too was not oblivious to this fact.
Someone as aware as I am of what we're losing right now.
He in particular knows the feeling better than I, I'm sure of it,
Sometimes I can still see the outline of his youth,
A faded crease in time..
Youth, a mere thumbprint now.
It comes when he's caught in-between actions:
Looking up, sitting down, shifting his eyes, walking through doorways.
It shows in a certain thoughtful expression or when he stands up tall.
Youth is a neverending escapee, an eternal bandit.
For some it's best forgotten, for others it was the height of their life.
Youth, the time of eternal Spring.
And it's going, going, going, going–
And it's gone.

We’ll play at being poets
You’ll be Dante and I’ll be Virgil
And I’ll guide you through hell and back.

My neglected duties lie in a heap on the floor, my head hurts as I stare down at them. So many.
And time? Fleeting.
I receive no sympathy from time. I evoke no empathy from my own conscience, nor fantasy.
All the unspoken words I’ve neglected to voice lie gentle on the nightstand.
And I sleep sound.

Gone.
I have lost my mind.
It left in the night.
Gone is my mind and gone is my light.

I spent the night creating,
painting,
sighing.
I sipped some water, my paintbrush sipped some water before being thrusted into a smear of color once more.
All the while I sat listening to sad songs from the 1950s
All of them complete with lots of twang and a few young bucks howling into microphones over lost lovers.
Leisure, and for what?
I’m beginning to think I was weaned on restlessness.
For I crave destruction each full moon
In despite of my perpetual need to create.
I run around looking a fright.
Cutting statues and watching them bleed marble blood,
Burning paintings just to hear them howl and drip.

Of Greyhound buses and cigarettes,
Whiskey and champagne.
Belongs to the fringes of society,
If anything.
Polemics as a past-time and books as a spell,
Loved nothing more than to rebel.
Never sober yet always clean,
Short and thin, eyes of evergreen.
Argument and sacrilege,
Living life on the edge.
You say you hate him and his disregard for ethics,
He doesn’t care. Yet he makes a lasting impression.
He won’t jump through hoops if you tell him to, but he will sit and watch others jump through hoops with you.
It is only now I realize he gave it his all.
It is only now I realize he was sincere,
However vain and bafoonishly depraved he may have been.
They say he experienced all the seasons of life.
When I saw him last, he was calm in his casket.
He looked like all possibilities–and roads, both taken and passed–at once.